4 pane comic of dolan on the left and spooderman on the right
pane 1 (dolan): cum join opensurce cummunity!
pane 2 (spooderman): shure! how joyn?
pane 3 (dolan): Here discord! (with discord logo)
pane 4 (spooderman with tears in eyes): y u do dis?
Good for you, you have a short list of requirements out of a chat service and discord perfectly fills your niche. But different people have different requirements for chat, and they don’t align. And network effects force people who have differing requirements to use the service with the most users which sucks.
For instance here are things that I require from any chat service that I use that discord completely falls flat at:
- Ability to run it on my linux machine without using an electron client (npm is a huge mess of supply chain attacks and I refuse to run any software that is likely to contain dependencies from it)
- Ability to run it on my AOSP phone which does not have any google play services installed
- Ability to write software to back up messages without fear of a company changing their API and breaking my backup system
Just join a server, find your answer, and leave. Why is that so scary? You don’t even have to interact with anyone.
That lazy culture is exactly why discord is bad for the job. I search for solutions first, instead of barging in with a question that may have been asked and resolved a thousand times before.
At the end of the day all of the reasons you stated maybe <1% of people care about and most of the points have nothing to do with the chatting features itself. If I’m honest it’s basically paranoia and fear for the insanely low chance something goes slightly wrong. It’s like refusing to leave your house because you can spontaneously get struck by lightning. 🤷
Whatever solution you’re using I would bet most people would find incredibly annoying to use from a usability perspective. As it would lack the 8 years worth of features and QoL discord introduced.
So we have a philosophical difference and that’s that.
Agreed, but my point is with a centralized network the lowest common denominator wins. There is no reason you can’t have QoL features on an open network, and thusly let everyone have the features that they care most about.
Can you imagine what a shithole the internet would have been if email wasn’t federated an open? There is absolutely no way that whatever centralized bullshit would have spawned instead would already be either long gone or enshittified to the point of being useless.
